Sheet is attached (with background appended). Posted here is his public background and description.

David Magister lost his mother early on, and his father shortly before graduating high school. He was always at the top of his class during his twelve years of grade school and high school, but his story truly begins when his keen mind and boundless ambition caught the eye of Dartmouth College who, after their interviewer saw the fire in his eyes, offered him a full scholarship.

At Dartmouth, he was arrogant and prideful, seen in only the wealthiest attire. He adopted an austere, Spartan style, often wearing only a shirt, tie, slacks, and blazer, with only a simple-but-elegant gold watch and cufflinks to finish the ensemble. He constructed his wardrobe to include mostly custom-tailored designer clothing, and it was always freshly pressed and severely crisp. He was the son of a wealthy family, and he made sure everyone knew it, not through boasts, but simply by the sheer arrogant condescension that radiated off of him.

He devoured every bit of knowledge he could find, and studied obsessively, training his mind and memory to keep himself in the top 5% of his class – though he could never attain the top spot, which was a cause of constant frustration to him. In time, he became almost as obsessed with knowledge for its own sake as he was with excellence, and began actively seeking out courses that would put him in contact with what he thought of as “obsolete superstition,” the better to debunk and discredit such... plebian ideas.

It was in one of these courses, “Myth, Mythology, and Mysticism,” that David came into contact with Mark Hunters. The two immediately clashed, practically hijacking the entire first class session with their argument, as Hunters was not only a lowbrow, blue-collar punk, but also an avid adherent of paganism (which to David’s mind should have at least had the grace to wither and die when monotheism – a much more sensible delusion – came along to replace it) – also, even more annoyingly, Mark seemed to be clever enough to hold his own in the argument.

When the class let out, David was unable to let the argument go, and followed Mark down the halls, continuing the debate as they went. Eventually, after over an hour of bickering on the quad, they adjourned to the dining hall by unspoken mutual agreement, as neither had eaten that day, and it was already nearly 3:00. While the emails they received from the professor strongly discouraged them from continuing their “lively” debates during class any further, both of them, especially David, almost always ended the class itching for a good fight (as the professor’s carefully neutral stance on the supernatural satisfied neither of them), and they soon fell into a habit of grabbing lunch together after class and subsequently clearing a whole corner of the dining hall with their scathing, blistering debates. Over time, Mark wound up being the closest thing to a friend that David had, bound by mutual animosity.

This changed only slightly in senior year, when David was crossing campus and witnessed a fellow student vanish into thin air. When he mentioned this bizarre event to Mark, Mark insisted that here was the proof David wanted – there were indeed things beyond the scope of science and reason. David, on the other hand, though he subconsciously came to a similar conclusion, refused to admit it even to himself, and began searching for an explanation, eventually passing it off as a rare optical distortion caused by a strange confluence of heat patterns in the air – essentially an odd New England mirage. Nonetheless, he began borrowing books on the occult, both from the library and from Mark, and started trying to absorb as much data as he could.

Though he made different excuses to Mark, the real reason was that after that first incident, he became more sensitive in a way to odd events in the news, and things like unexplained “animal mauling” or “exsanguination” stuck in his head. He certainly didn’t believe that the cause was anything nonsensical like werewolves or vampires, but by reading as much as he could of the misguided legends of such things, he thought that perhaps he could piece together the motives and methods of the killers, who might very well be imitating such fantastical creatures to sow confusion, or simply because they had become dangerously immersed in their superstitious delusions. Near the end of his senior year, he realized there were potentially dangerous gaps in his knowledge, and without a second thought he snuck into the library just before closing and walked out the next morning with his backpack loaded full of all the rarest and most restricted occult tomes from the library’s deepest stacks. He was never caught or even suspected due to his sterling reputation.

Upon graduation, David had little concern for money, but his pride would not allow him to simply live off his inheritance, and he insisted on going all the way down to Louisiana to prove to himself that he could get a good job on his own merits, not those of his reputation. He realized that his broad-based education was really only well-suited to a professorship of his own, but wanted to have some solid experience in the world before going to graduate school, so after seeing a tiny ad in the paper for an independent private investigator, he decided to put his analytical mind to good use and applied for a license himself. While he was physically rather frail, and therefore not capable of effectively conducting the sort of chases that are often required in such a line of work, his brilliance and knack for seeing patterns where others could not worked in his favor, and he began to be able to support himself fairly comfortably in a small apartment off the proceeds of recovered valuables and uncovered spousal infidelities (incriminating evidence available upon request) - all without drawing on his family resources, which he transferred overseas and refused to touch until he had achieved independent success.

After he had been in this business for a year or so, he got a call from New Orleans. It turned out that Mark had wound up in Louisiana as well, and was in need of a job. Given that Mark possessed the very physical skills that David lacked, he was more than willing to give his former schoolmate a number of jobs as they became available, raising his rates and giving Mark a relatively fair cut. When Hurricane Katrina had finished its devastating work, David got a job offer from a PI firm in New Orleans, and he took Mark along with him.

The firm often assigned them to work together, though almost as often alone, and they both attempted to be assigned to all the weirdest cases, but both turned out to be solid investigators, regardless of the task. By this time, David’s obsession with excellence had crystallized, and he had developed a very rational, logical code of personal ethics that, while it derived from utilitarianism, verged more closely on nihilism – basically, the “right” thing for him to do was whatever got the task (however he defined his task) done most effectively. While this has caused a few raised eyebrows, it has also provided him with an undeniably impressive record that has recently earned him a promotion within the firm.

David Magister

02-27-2007, 09:31 PM

David Magister is a tall, rather frail man, but with an intensity that burns like fire. He is always impeccably dressed in very conservative but undeniably expensive and somewhat over-formal fashions, with a minimal amount of accessories, giving him a severe and austere appearance that is only accentuated by his dry and often absent sense of humor, his gimlet stare, and his cynical demeanor. Nonetheless, he can be quite pleasant in his mannerisms - it's just hard to shake the feeling that his friendliness is that of a wolf to a sheep, or a spider to a fly.